Tag Archives: readiness for change

Change

Tips for Managing Change

change

As the year winds down and the New Year approaches, many organizations will be formulating strategic plans.

Naturally, just like all improvement plans, these New Year plans will involve a necessary but most often unpopular component — change!

While change is not always perceived as being good, without change comes stagnation and potential loss. Examples include: Converse in sneakers or Kodak and Polaroid in photography, Blockbuster, Blackberry, and so many more… each experiencing significant declines in market share (or worse!) as competitors introduced new and improved, lower-cost alternatives.

The first step in any change effort is to help people develop the right mental attitude and understand that change is a constant part of long-term success.

Here are a few tips that might help people develop a better attitude toward change or a heightened “readiness” to change:

  • Plan ahead. If you know change is on the horizon, do some prep work. …
  • Reframe your thinking. Figure out what’s going on in your mind when you’re feeling sad or anxious, and break negative patterns.
  • Recognize that improvement or change is not an indictment of the current way but rather a never-ending search for a better way.
  • Take time to reflect. Is my “resistance” putting my career in jeopardy? Am I being overly stubborn? Am I afraid to try?
  • Strive to maintain some normalcy/routine.
  • Take a long term view. Sure, a new process or procedure will feel foreign at the start, but how will it feel six months from now? Next year?
  • Test yourself! Look at upcoming change as a challenge; remember that we tend to learn the most when we step outside of our comfort zone!
  • Recognize that it is a lot easier to change when you “can” rather than when you “must”
Change

Ready, Set, Change!

change

Spring boarding off of our previous post about engaging people around the work, it’s important to recognize that achieving new and improved ways of completing that work requires change.

But despite the fact that change is a critical component of growth and ongoing success, it is not always perceived as being good. In organizations of all types, people tend to look with skepticism at innovations and new methods, processes, policies and procedures; and people at all levels sometimes cringe at the suggestion that there might be a different or better way to do their jobs!

Yet without change comes stagnation and potential loss. Examples include: Converse in sneakers or Kodak in photography, each experiencing significant declines in market share and profits as competitors introduced new and improved, lower-cost alternatives.

The first step in any change effort is to help people develop the right mental attitude and understand that change is a constant part of long-term success — a readiness for change. This step typically involves assessment, positioning, and establishing “why” change is necessary (and good!).

Additional steps that can help people prepare for and embrace change include:

  • Making continuous improvement a permanent part of your corporate culture…that gets people at all levels to change the way they think, talk, work, and act
  • Establishing new perspectives on work, work processes and value-added work
  • Effectively using various statistical tools to identify, analyze, understand and communicate variation
  • Enlisting the help of people operating the work processes
  • Quantifying how continuous improvement benefits all stakeholders
  • Improving leadership and coaching skills that lead to increased employee engagement
  • Reinforcement

The goal in successful change efforts is not only a change in how people think, but also a change in how they feel about the changes you’re trying to make. As John Kotter, a recognized pioneer in leading change put it, “The most successful change initiatives involve winning over both minds and hearts.”

Change

Ready for a Change?

Is the team ready?

As noted in previous posts, the start of a new year is often a time for making resolutions or strategic improvement plans, which is another way of saying “a time for change.”

As we all know, change is a critical component of growth and ongoing success; and, to be effective, change initiatives must involve not only a change in attitude, but also behavioral change.

But, as we also know, change is not always perceived as being good. In organizations of all types, people tend to look with skepticism at innovations and new methods, processes, policies and procedures; and people at all levels sometimes cringe at the suggestion that there might be a different or better way to do their jobs!

Yet without change comes stagnation and potential loss. Examples include: Converse in sneakers or Kodak in photography, each experiencing significant declines in market share and profits as competitors introduced new and improved, lower-cost alternatives.

Readiness… the Right Attitude
The first step in any change effort is to help people develop the right mental attitude and understand that change is a constant part of long-term success. We have found that this “readiness for change” is best brought about through assessment, communication, education, empowerment, measurement, and recognition.

Components of helping people prepare for and embrace change include:

  • Making continuous improvement a permanent part of your corporate culture so that people at all levels change the way they think, talk, work, and act
  • Establishing new perspectives on work, work processes and value-added work
  • Clearly identifying the necessary or desired changes to actions and behaviors
  • Effectively using statistical tools to identify, analyze, understand and communicate variation and to measure improvement
  • Enlisting the help of people operating the work processes
  • Quantifying how continuous improvement benefits all stakeholders
  • Improving leadership and coaching skills that lead to increased employee engagement
Agility, Change, Continuous Improvement

Agility, Readiness & Change

Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt!

Rapid acceleration in the pace of change has taken place within the business world over the past ten years. This fact has also accelerated the need for organizational agility, in both thought and behavior.

Agility and change are inextricably linked. The goal in most change efforts is not only a change in attitude, but behavioral change.

But of course change is not always perceived as being good. In fact, people at all levels tend to react with fear, uncertainty, and doubt (the “FUD” factor) when new ideas, processes, policies or procedures are introduced; and many cringe at the mere suggestion that there might be a different or better way to do their jobs !

Yet without change comes stagnation and potential loss.

The first step in any change effort, and in maintaining organizational agility, is to help people develop the right mental attitude and understand that timely change is a constant part of long-term success — this readiness for change will require:

  • Making continuous improvement a permanent part of the organization’s culture…
  • Getting people at all levels to change the way they think, talk, work, and act, and fostering a culture of open-mindedness and amnesty.
  • Establishing new perspectives on work, work processes and value-added work.
  • Effectively using various statistical tools to identify, analyze, understand and communicate variation.
  • Enlisting input from of people operating the work processes.
  • Quantifying how continuous improvement benefits all stakeholders.
  • Improving leadership and coaching skills that lead to increased employee capability and engagement.
Change, Continuous Improvement, Engagement

Ready to Change?

Change is a critical component of growth and ongoing success, yet two-thirds of all change initiatives fail.

In fact, change is not always perceived as being good. In organizations of all types, people tend to look with skepticism at innovations and new methods, processes, policies and procedures; and people at all levels cringe at the suggestion that there might be a different or better way to do their jobs!

Yet without change comes stagnation and risk of obsolescence and loss, a-la Kodak, Polaroid, Blockbuster, and so many other once-robust organizations that experienced significant declines in market share (or worse) and profits as competitors introduced new and improved, lower-cost alternatives.

Long-term, the goal is not only a change in attitude, but behavioral change. The first step is to help people develop the right mental attitude and understand that change is a constant part of long-term success — to help them develop a readiness for change.

One way to achieve these objectives is to involve people at all levels in ongoing organizational change by making continuous improvement a permanent part of your corporate culture… by using the fundamental principles of continuous improvement and workforce engagement in a way that gets people at all levels to change the way they think, talk, work, and act… by educating and empowering people to improve both the work and the workplace – their work and their workplace!

People tend to become engaged when they feel productive… when they feel like they are achieving success and that they are an important part of the organization’s success; when they feel that they have a voice in creating a better, more productive workplace as well as a better future.

Make this type of measured pursuit a part your culture and the results can be astounding!

Read more …

Agility, Change

Agility & Change: Are You Ready?

As noted in recent posts, the rapid acceleration in the pace of change that has taken place within the business world over the past ten years has also accelerated the need for organizational agility in both thought and behavior.

Agility and change are inextricably linked.  The goal in most change efforts is not only a change in attitude, but behavioral change.

But of course change is not always perceived as being good. In organizations of all types, people tend to look with skepticism at innovations and new methods, processes, policies and procedures; and people at all levels sometimes cringe at the suggestion that there might be a different or better way to do their jobs!

Yet without change comes stagnation and potential loss.

The first step in any change effort, and in maintaining organizational agility, is to help people develop the right mental attitude and understand that timely change is a constant part of long-term success — this readiness for change will require:

  • Making continuous improvement a permanent part of the organization’s culture… getting people at all levels to change the way they think, talk, work, and act, and fostering a culture of open-mindedness and amnesty
  • Establishing new perspectives on work, work processes and value-added work
  • Effectively using various statistical tools to identify, analyze, understand and communicate variation
  • Enlisting the help of people operating the work processes
  • Quantifying how continuous improvement benefits all stakeholders
  • Improving leadership and coaching skills that lead to increased employee engagement

 

Agility, Change, Continuous Improvement, Leadership

How to Develop Organizational Agility

Many people say they would like to make their organizations more agile, but few organizations have a formalized strategy to do so.

For many leaders, the planning and management methods mastered on their way up the ladder were designed and effective in a different time, when change moved at a much slower pace.  Others, as noted in our previous post, might lean more toward the entrepreneurial side, exhibiting high-levels of vision and enthusiasm, but not the team-building or other managerial skills necessary to develop a truly agile environment; and others may simply fail to stay the course.

To gain agility, today’s leaders must incorporate these four “agility enablers” into their operating model:

  1. Fast and effective information flows so their enterprise can emulate  Wayne Gretzky and “just skate to where the puck is going to be.”
  2. Strong leadership and teamwork to turn insight into action; people at all levels must be engaged, involved, and accepting of ongoing change.
  3. Relentlessly streamlined and simplified processes in order to handle the more rapid pace of implementation. If the processes that comprise the value stream are held together by patches, expediting, and human vigilance, or are full of inspection, rework, delays, over-specification, redundancies, excess inventory, complexity, etc. it will be very difficult to execute the necessary changes.
  4. Flexible investments, as acceleration of change makes acquired assets obsolete faster, so both the investment and hiring strategy should reflect the need for flexibility.